The Mill on the Floss
huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.
But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden
water.
The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace
never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment the days
when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the
daisied fields together.
Conclusion
Nature repairs her ravages,—repairs them with her sunshine, and with
human labour. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little
visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth
autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among
the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were
busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and
unlading.
And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living,
except those whose end we know.
Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not
rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new
growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath
their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes
that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.
Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote churchyard—where the brick
grave that held a father whom we know, was found with the stone laid
prostrate upon it after the flood—had recovered all its grassy order
and decent quiet.
Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the
flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was
visited at different moments by two men who both felt that their
keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there.
One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him; but
that was years after.
The other was always solitary. His great companionship was among the
trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed still to hover,
like a revisiting spirit.
The tomb bore the names of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, and below the names
it was written,—
“In their death they were not divided.”